PERSONALS -- All Quiet at the Ferry Building

Published 4:00 am, Tuesday, April 28, 1998

Les Mills wrote a few weeks ago to remark on the loss of a great San Francisco tradition. "For years the carillon in the Ferry Building tolled the time," he wrote, "and after the sixth toll in the evening hours a brief interlude of two (musical) numbers filled the air. A piece of magic is now still."

When he went into the building to ask about the silence, Mills says, he was told that "new tenants in apartment buildings within the vicinity didn't like the carillon."

Not true is the official word from the landlord, the Port of San Francisco.

"The system is very old," said public relations officer Renee Dunn, and was installed "probably close to 1898," the year the building was dedicated. Half of this ancient "music chime" is broken, she said, and the whole system has to be replaced, which would cost something like $25,000. Since the Ferry Building's about to be renovated, official thinking is that it "probably makes more sense" to wait to include the carillon repair in the whole job.

Maybe it does, but the facts aren't true, says San Francisco historian Gladys Hansen. The clock on the building was silent for its first 20 years. In December 1918, a siren was sounded for the first time on New Year's Eve. After that, it was sounded regularly at 8 a.m., noon and 4:30 p.m., keeping dockworkers on schedule.

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On Dec. 18, 1972, wrote The Chronicle's Kevin Wallace, the "extremely raucous" siren was replaced with the sound of chimes, "mere electronic mockeries of clock chimes," "synched to some little clock of their own, stuffed in a . . . crawl space."

So in answer to your query, Les Mills: A 25-year-old electronic gizmo isn't turned on or isn't working, and maybe it would cost a bunch of money to fix it, that is, if the tenants didn't mind. Meanwhile, organ fans are hoping to raise $1 million for a new music concourse in the neighborhood. Sorry if you're missing the magic of the bells, and sorry, too, to Gladys Hansen, whose mourning is more practical. "Once, we were a port," she sighs.

COVER GIRL SPEAKS UP

Supermodel Naomi Campbell went to Cuba recently with Kate Moss and photographer Patrick DeMarchelier, and, according to the New York Post, the two were supposed to be on the cover of Harper's Bazaar. The May issue, however, pictures Moss alone.

"I was really happy with the Harper's Bazaar shoot," Campbell told the Post. "The pictures look great and I'm always glad to see one of my close friends gracing the cover. But after years in this business, I'd hoped to see more progress in ethnic diversity."

Campbell appeared on a Vogue cover two years ago that was folded; Niki Taylor was shown on the front, and Campbell was tucked inside. When Vogue editor Anna Wintour ran a black model on the cover last July, she wrote a "Letter to the Editor" congratulating herself on her decision, noting that the "color of a cover model's skin (or hair for that matter) dramatically affects newsstand sales."

FLASH

-- Tom Sweeney, beefeater/doorman at the Sir Francis Drake, is proud of the new plaque honoring his 20 years of service; and Sam Provenzano sends word of his 50th anniversary as an art teacher, claiming that his SoMa Provenzano Studio School is the oldest in the Bay Area.

-- The Disney film based on John Irving's 1989 novel, "A Prayer for Owen Meany," won't be named after the book, says New York magazine, because the screenplay differs so much from its source. "John really did like the script," a representative of the author told the magazine, "but it just wasn't his book anymore."

According to the author's contract, he had the right to insist on a name change, in addition to name changes for all the characters. The movie's titles will include the notation that it was "inspired by" the Irving book.

WHO SAID WHAT

"There've been many times when I'd be perspiring -- I do a lot of that on stage -- and I was crying. People thought I was only perspiring, but I'd be crying. . . . I used to go with a girl. She also had a madam, and I used to ask her how could she do this and do that and still love me. She said, 'That's my job, but with you it's love.' It's the same thing with me and music." B.B. King in Musician magazine.